Filmy Connection-1: Under-screened and over-filmed

The first of a two-part series explores the opportunities and challenges in India’s movie market, the world’s biggest film producer and yet one of the least profitable.

India made 1,902 films in 2016 keeping its long-held title of the world’s biggest film-producing country. It also retained its other titles — one of world’s most under-screened and under monetised markets, according to data Box Office India shared with Business Standard. 

What the data doesn’t show but is evident is that India is also one of the least profitable film markets. It explains why Disney shut its studio operations in the country last year and why other studios have scaled back on their India business.

India has one screen for 154,000 people against one for every 35,000 that China does. Incidentally, China had about 9,000 screens in 2011 when the state decided to push investment into building screens. By 2015, China had over 39,000 screens and its box-office revenues — which are 90 per cent of all its film revenues — stood at $6.8 billion, making it the world’s second-largest film market. 

You could argue that the private sector in India is doing great work putting up 150-200 screens a year without any state push. It is, but the development of screens remains lopsided. Some cities — Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Hyderabad have China-like screen density. On the other hand, some really large ones — Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata — have way poorer densities. That is the second thing the data show.

Of the 200-300 Hindi movies a year, the top 20 films make three-fourths of the revenues of the box-office. The figure has remained consistent for the past eight years that Box-Office India has crunched the data for. This, arguably, is true for South Indian cinema — the most robust part of the business in India — too.